Trouble is, under the radio-as-radio model, people still generally paid for music. Under the piracy-as-radio model, they don’t, or at least they don’t in anything like the proportions they used to. Physical music album sales have been plummeting for years. Digital sales have been inching up, but again, in nothing like a compensatory capacity (and there’s little evidence at this point to suggest the people who pay for music have much to do with the ones pirating it).

Alyssa Rosenberg develops a compromise solution to address some of piracy's costs.